


Keeper of Secrets

by Xenokroma



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 16:19:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12535956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xenokroma/pseuds/Xenokroma
Summary: Several months ago, RJ MacCready befriended Adrian, who, at first glance, appeared to be just a trustworthy, likable guy.  But, as time went on, RJ realized that Adrian's entire life story was riddled with holes, secrets, and lies.Then, one night, Adrian finally told him the truth.





	Keeper of Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> So, here is my first ever Fallout fan fiction! I just wanted to write a brief little one-shot about my OC, Adrian, and MacCready, who happens to be my favorite companion in the game. I apologize in advance for any lore mistakes. I hope you enjoy it!

The sun gently caressed the skin of the two men below as they patrolled the shattered road that lead them towards home. The wind rustled their hair, whispering in their ears as it passed. The autumn breeze carried secrets and lies that only the surrounding grass and trees could ever understand. The day, to a human, was peaceful and clear; the sky was blue, save for a small handful of fluffy clouds in the distance. 

“It’s a nice day,” Adrian closed his eyes, savoring the passing breeze. “Reminds me of home.”

“I thought this was your home.” RJ squinted in confusion as he tried to recall the brief biography Adrian had given him about his life. RJ was amazed that a story so vague and undetailed could contain so many twists and turns and holes.

“Well, that’s the thing about wandering,” Adrian shrugged as a stiff smile weakly nudged and prodded at the hairs of his beard, “a lot of places start to feel like home.”

 _But you said that your caravan only did business in the Commonwealth,_ RJ wanted to ask. But fearing that further confrontation would anger his only friend, he held his tongue. 

“Yeah, that’s true,” RJ lied.

For the next several hours, the two men walked and talked until the day slowly began to give way to night. As the sun gradually dipped below the horizon, the conversation slowed, and then died off. RJ adjusted his hat as the breeze slowly strengthened with the night. He allowed his mind to wander with the wind, losing himself in thought. 

He thought of Adrian - Adrian the trader, Adrian the traveller, Adrian the general of the Minutemen. For a man with such a humble past, Adrian towered head and shoulders above everyone around him like a superhero. He had never been anybody but a trader, yet he carried himself like a soldier. He had never seen a battle before joining the Minutemen, and yet when he fought, he moved swiftly and silently, like a cat. 

What concerned him most, however, was why Adrian had taken up the sniper rifle when he appeared to be as blind as a bat. The man never took off his glasses and often had to squint when reading distant signs. But despite his seemingly awful vision, Adrian could shoot with deadly accuracy.

Who was he? Was he even telling the truth? Or was he lying? Perhaps Adrian had, like him, once been a cold-blooded killer for caps… and then lied to those close to him about it.

 _It’s payback,_ RJ realized, staring down at his boots as he trudged along the destroyed road. A sudden wave of grief sank his stomach and filled him until it caught in his throat. Perhaps Adrian was brought into his life by some unknown force. Maybe it was the ghost of his wife Lucy, taking her revenge for all of the lies he’d told her straight to her face. Either way, it didn’t matter: he deserved it.

Perhaps, one day soon, Adrian would be the one to put a bullet in the back of his head. That didn’t matter either, because he deserved that, too.

RJ could only hope that he looked tired as his thoughts began to tear away at him like the fingers and teeth of a horde of feral ghouls. _I should’ve just died right then and there._ He grimaced as he tried to imagine the flesh being torn from his bones, by his wife’s side just like it had meant to be. If there was any justice in the world, that abandoned metro station would have become his grave.

The puttering sound of turrets and the noises made by people and robots milling about ahead finally freed RJ from this thoughts. He was happy to finally hear the noises made by the place he had just recently began to call his home. As he and Adrian headed home, the rickety, wooden bridge that lead into Sanctuary Hills was a most welcome sight.

The bridge thudded and creaked beneath their aching feet as they crossed. Part of the bridge had crumbled and fallen into the creek below. It was a miracle that such a beat up old bridge was able to handle such heavy traffic from humans and pack brahmin alike.

As the two of them entered the neighborhood, they were greeted by the Minutemen who manned the guard posts on either side of the road. The darkness that blanketed the Commonwealth was repressed by the fire barrels and makeshift street lamps that lined the sidewalk.

There was still the faintest hint of orange in the sky as the two men entered their shared house and laid their rifles on the kitchen table with a clatter. Adrian took his place on the sofa, putting his feet on the ottoman and staring at the TV as if expecting it to ever turn on again. 

RJ opened up the old metal trunk that sat in the corner of the kitchen, finding himself a warm bottle of beer. There were cold drinks in the makeshift bar that had been set up in a house in the neighborhood, but RJ was hardly in the mood to interact with other people. He could barely even stand being around Adrian at the moment. All he really wanted at that moment was his beer and some much needed alone time.

RJ thanked his lucky stars that the other man was being fairly quiet, only to grow tense when Adrian once again began to speak.

“God, my feet are killing me,” Adrian groaned, “I hate having to walk places.”

The statement was relatively innocent, but it was enough to cause RJ to become tense and aggravated.

“Yeah, you think you’d be used to it by now,” RJ didn’t even bother to keep the agitation and pettiness out of his voice as he lifted his eyes from the counter, allowing his gaze to sear into Adrian, “y’know, having been in a caravan and all.”

Adrian froze. His silence indicated that RJ had found yet another hole in the fabric of his life story.

“Unless you’re going to tell me your caravan travelled by vertibird,” RJ spat, “or maybe it wasn’t a caravan after all! Maybe you actually set up shop in Goodneighbor, and somehow, you just so happened to erase yourself from everyone’s memories before you left!”

Adrian stared at him, aghast. His mouth opened, but his words failed him and he remained in a stunned silence. The other man simply looked away, off into space, as shame began to overlook him. The sudden slouching of Adrian’s shoulders was enough to pacify RJ’s anger, but not enough for him to let yet another lie slide. _No more lies._

“We’ve been travelling together for months now, and I think I’ve been pretty open and honest with you,” RJ continued, more slowly, doing his best to dull the edge in his voice, “but it feels like all you’ve done is lie to my face. Nobody we’ve met seems to know who you are. And to be honest, I’m not sure I do either.”

There was a tense silence. Adrian glanced at RJ, then at the wall, then at his feet. His shoulders sunk and his face fell as he tried to avoid RJ’s piercing gaze. The older man chewed his lip, contemplating as he stared at the wall. His eyes glazed over as if his entire life was flashing before them.

“You really wanna know the truth?” Adrian asked the wall, his voice heavy and sluggish from all the pain and grief and regret that it had been carrying for so long. As RJ stared at him, Adrian took a slow, shaking breath, bracing himself for the conversation that was about to unfold.

RJ suddenly imagined himself trying to tell the truth to Lucy; he picture himself in Adrian’s position on the couch, telling his beloved wife that he was never a soldier , that he was only a hired gun. But he realized with a sinking stomach that even calling himself a ‘hired gun’ was flattering; he’d been a _Gunner_. Could he really blame Adrian for not being open about his life?

RJ suddenly regretted his outburst, “l-look, I’m sorry I said anything. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… I just…” He stared down into his nearly empty beer bottle as his words failed him. He felt an overwhelming sense of guilt at his prying. RJ sighed as he nudged his beer bottle, watching the dark liquid swish about within its glass container.

There was another long silence. Adrian swallowed, as though trying to fight back tears, as he stared blankly at the wall. RJ had never seen Adrian in such a state; part of him feared that the man might lose his temper as he had in the past. But the man remained calm and silent, lost in his own thoughts.

It was several more minutes before Adrian finally rose to his feet.

“I need to be alone for a while.”

RJ said nothing as Adrian left the house and wandered into the night.

_Way to go, jerk._

RJ finished the remainder of his drink before slinking into his bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light. He tossed his hat on to the makeshift nightstand before throwing himself onto his lumpy mattress. As he laid there, unmoving, RJ stared at the metal ceiling tiles above his head that time and nuclear war had bent and decayed. Adrian had shoved some wood up into the roof to help keep rain out, but the cold, night air still found its way into the abandoned house.

As he examined the rusty, bent metal, RJ tried to picture the people who had lived in this house before the war. What were they like? What did they do? RJ had a hard time imagining what the world might have once been like. He tried to imagine himself, Lucy, and his son, Duncan, all living in a shiny, new house. He tried to imagine himself leaving home every morning to go to a job he didn’t have to lie about. He tried to imagine a world and a life where he was something other than a hired killer.

 _You’re a liar, too._ RJ chastised himself, cutting off his own daydreaming about a life he would never know. _How could you feel so entitled to know the truth when you never even told your_ wife _who you really were?_

RJ sighed as he turned over and stared out the open window, wondering where Adrian had wandered off to. He got out of his bed, picked up his rifle, and ventured into the night in search of his friend.

“It’s a pleasant evening, isn’t it, Mr. MacCready?” Codsworth cheerfully asked as RJ passed him on the sidewalk.

“Do you have any idea where Adrian went?” 

“Last I saw, he was wandering up the dirt path leading up to the local vault.” Codsworth paused, his three metal eyes ‘drooping’ as if recalling a sad memory. “Though why he would ever want to go back to that place is beyond me. Do be sure to check on him, I do hope he’s alright…”

RJ thanked Codsworth before promising, as always, that he would take good care of his master before making his way to the small footbridge that lead North out of Sanctuary.

As soon as his boots met the dirt on the other side of the creek, however, RJ’s skin began to crawl. Nothing felt different about this place, and yet everything did. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, as if protesting his presence in that area.

 _Turn back,_ said a voice in the back of his head, _you shouldn’t be here._

RJ forced his feet to move along the path as he shoved the apprehension back down into the recesses of his mind. If Adrian had really gone to a place like this, RJ had to make sure that he was okay.

By the time he began to ascend the hill, the world around RJ had become impossibly quiet. The dead trees loomed over him, watching silently as he entered what felt more akin to a graveyard than a regular forest. Codsworth had briefly mentioned that there was a vault up there, and RJ knew all too well that those places often turned into graveyards, or worse.

 _So, Adrian must have been a vault dweller at one point, which is why he has that Pip-Boy and doesn’t seem to know his way around very well,_ RJ pondered as he walked. As he reflected on what Codsworth had just told him about Adrian’s relationship to this place, RJ felt all the more guilty about his outburst earlier that evening. _Something really bad must have happened to him in this vault. Something I just forced him to relive…_

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened… and worry. RJ knew all too well that vaults often did nothing but brew trouble, pain, and bad memories. 

Up ahead was the chain-link fence that RJ guessed closed off the entrance to the vault from the rest of the world. Blocking the path, however, were half a dozen skeletons. Seeing bones littered about was a common occurrence in the wasteland, but something about these skeletons in particular gave RJ goosebumps. _They must not have made it to the vault in time._

Treading carefully as not to disturb the haphazard graveyard that surrounded him, RJ stepped through the gate and made his way towards the vault. He passed by a destroyed vertibird as he rounded the curve that finally lead to the massive, metal door in the ground. At the far end sat Adrian’s slumped figure, looking out over Sanctuary Hills.

RJ slowly strode across the vault door, hoping his footsteps would alert Adrian to his approach. The older man lifted his head as RJ approached, but he didn’t turn around to look. He just stared blankly into the dark landscape as if waiting for something, or someone, to appear.

RJ slowly sat down a few feet away from Adrian. He shivered slightly; the cold metal beneath him didn’t help to combat the chilly breeze and the sharp air that inhabited the Commonwealth during autumn nights.

“Hey,” RJ softly greeted his friend, gently, as though trying to avoid setting off a mine.

There was a pause, and RJ feared that he may have ignited Adrian’s perilously short fuse. But the other man just continued to stare into the night, watching Sanctuary Hills bustle and hum as its citizens enjoyed a hard-earned evening off.

“Hey.”

Something sounded different about Adrian. RJ had heard him speak when he was upset, and when he had worked himself to the brink of exhaustion. But in his one-word response, Adrian had expressed a weariness that RJ had never known he had been carrying with him.

The two men remained silent for several minutes. The quiet was broken only by crickets and the sounds of the settlement in the distance.

“I-I just wanted to say sorry about earlier,” RJ murmured, not entirely confident that his mind had conjured the correct words to say, “if something bad happened, you don’t have to talk about it.”

Adrian slowly shook his head. RJ looked off into the night.

“We both know I’m the last person on the face of the Earth who’s in any position to judge you.” RJ sighed as even more guilt crept out from the dark, weighing him down even more.

“But you never lied to me.” Adrian countered. He sighed as he pulled one knee closer to himself, clinging to it as if his life depended on it. “If we’re going to continue to be friends, I think I owe you the truth.”

Adrian’s eyes turned to the distant green lights that danced above the Glowing Sea, in the exact spot that the bomb had hit over two hundred years ago. Adrian watched the green storm with what seemed to be a somber familiarity.

“I just… could never find a good way to tell you. I guess, in the end, making up a story just felt easier.” Adrian confessed, still avoiding eye contact with RJ. “I wanted to tell you the trut, but it just sounds so ridiculous whenever I think about it. Some days, I’m not sure if I believe it.”

“Either way, I’m here for you if you need to talk.” Question after question raced through RJ’s mind, but he held his tongue, wanting to allow Adrian to tell his story on his own terms. More than ever, RJ wanted to know if Adrian’s hesitation to tell the truth was a result of shame, or something entirely different.

Adrian nodded in acknowledgement.

“I guess I’ll start with something easy: my last name is Quinn,” Adrian began, quietly snickering at himself, “And I’m not from the Commonwealth, at least not originally. I’m from California… or what’s left of it, I guess.”

“Like the New California Republic?” RJ had heard of the place, but he couldn’t say that he knew anything about it aside from stories he’d heard. Apparently, the NCR was just like the old countries that made up the world before the bombs fell.

“Um…” Adrian trailed off into that typical confused silence he often fell into when trying to mend the holes in his stories. But RJ was surprised that he continued talking. “Maybe? Well… yes and no, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” RJ cocked his head. 

“Well, ‘New California Republic’ or not, I’m from what used to be the state of California… before… well…” Adrian trailed off uncomfortably.

 _The Great War?_ RJ wondered what on Earth Adrian was trying to tell him.

Adrian finally turned around, his eyes meeting RJ’s. His green eyes, normally filled to the brim with charisma and intensity, now looked so lifeless and hurt. He saw pain that was so ancient, yet as fresh as an open wound.

“I saw the bombs fall.”

Adrian once again turned to the Glowing Sea. RJ, too, found his eyes falling upon the green glow that danced above the distant crater. During his time in the Commonwealth, RJ had always seen the glow as something eerily beautiful. But, as he and Adrian sat together in silence, RJ realized that, to his friend, that glow meant something entirely different.

What Adrian was feeling, RJ couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He’d lost his wife, but he couldn’t imagine the feeling of losing everyone he’d ever known, all within one blinding flash.

But there was one question that Adrian still hadn’t addressed.

“But how? I mean, you’re not a ghoul.” The only pre-war people RJ had ever spoken to were ghouls who had survived the initial blast and had their lifespans extended as a result. 

“The answer’s right beneath us.” Adrian’s tone was grim and hesitant, but he didn’t trip over his words as he often did in the past. “My family and our neighbors registered for the vault program. In the event of nuclear war, we were to live in Vault 111, which we’re sitting on top of right now. What Vault-Tec never told us was that we were going to be put through an experiment: cryostasis.”  
RJ was amazed; he’d always thought cryostasis was something that was only done in the old science fiction comics he sometimes found lying around in the wasteland. But he knew that Adrian’s story, if true, was no fantasy adventure.

“I was out for a little over two hundred years,” Adrian continued, “and I’m the only one who walked out of the vault. Everyone else suffocated and died but I was left alive.”

“Wait,” RJ interjected with a start, “so when the Institute took your son…”

Adrian nodded sadly. “They broke into the vault and took him right out of my wife’s arms. They shot her when she refused to give him up. They turned off everyone else’s life support but mine.”

“I’m really sorry…” was the only thing RJ could think to say as Adrian, once again, fell into silence. He saw the man swallow hard, attempting to wrestle back the lump in his throat that carried those dreaded tears. “You probably wanted some alone time. I’m sorry for prying… I’ll leave you alone...”

RJ started to get up.

“No, don’t,” RJ froze as Adrian stopped him, “I… like having you here.”

RJ sat back down, this time slightly closer to Adrian. He could still sense the grief that whirled and flurried within Adrian, but RJ swore that the man’s shoulders were held ever so slightly higher. Adrian gave him a weak yet fond smile before reaching into his pocket and producing his lighter, prompting RJ to do the same.

“Can I ask a couple of questions?” RJ turned back to Adrian before taking another draw from his cigarette.

“Go for it.”

“If this was the local vault, does that mean you lived in Sanctuary before the war?”

“Yep. Same house and everything.” A fond smile spread across Adrian’s face. RJ was relieved to see him recalling something positive for a change. It alleviated some of the guilt he felt for unintentionally making his friend relive something so traumatic.

RJ couldn’t help but feel somewhat amazed; he’d just been lying in that very house, imagining the people who might have once lived there. Little did he know that he’d been travelling with one of them for months. But there were still so many questions racing through RJ’s mind.

“I had one more question.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Well… I mean, you wear glasses,” RJ asked, “how did you end up becoming a sniper?”

Adrian smirked just before puffing out a tiny cloud of cigarette smoke.

“That’s a story for another night,” was all he said.

This time, the silence that followed carried with it not tension, but comfort and honesty. The peace was interrupted by nothing but the passing breeze and the eerie, green dance of the distant Glowing Sea. 

RJ just nodded in response and dropped the subject. He was, after all, dealing with Adrian - Adrian the time traveller, Adrian the survivor, Adrian the keeper of secrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read this! Anyway, there's obviously a lot more to Adrian's story than that, but I wanted to focus more on the interactions between these two than write a biography about Adrian (which I don't think anybody would want to sit through, lol.) There actually is a story about how Adrian lost his vision, but I didn't want to get too much into it because it's not really fully developed yet. But also, as I said, I didn't want to write every detail of his life in this piece.
> 
> Also, this is before Adrian and RJ get into a romantic relationship. Adrian is a bit older than RJ (he's somewhere in his 30's but I haven't decided his exact age) but I think they still work, lol. 
> 
> I also kind of liked the idea of Adrian not really telling a lot of people about what happened to him in fear of being taken advantage of by people.
> 
> That's all I really had to say about this one, but I'm definitely planning on writing more about these two in the future.


End file.
